Providing Workplace Prevention in the Changing Landscape of Covid-19

The workplace is one of the most neglected settings for prevention programming, especially programming devoted to preventing the use of psychoactive substances such as tobacco, alcohol, marijuana etc.. However, the workplace presents an opportunity to not only reach adults themselves, but also their children and the larger community with prevention messaging and prevention strategies. Many prevention professionals may not be familiar with workplace prevention interventions or services nor with the particular stresses of the workplace that can increase vulnerability for substance use.

Those stresses have increased dramatically in the age of Covid-19.  The workplace can be frontline—i.e., facing the pandemic in providing critical services--or teleworking from home with its own set of stressors.  Workplace prevention strategies can be applied to address these concerns.  At a micro-level, stresses include people working from home, who may be spending longer hours on the job, engaging much more with technology and in many cases,…